I gave limited experience with spies. I usually build 3-4 and go send them into enemy land, and just have them sit around on hills spying on them. If I go to war, then I have the spies go around and sabotage coal, and oil and stuff. But is there anything else useful to do with them? Blindly sabotaging production seems like a waste. Grabbing enemy plans is somewhat useful, but they can pretty much do that for free by just sitting around on hilltops.

Nope (other than being able to sabotage a city's build). Pretty bad eh?

Either way, if you want more options with spies, get BTS.

Coming out of Civ II, spies were extremely disappointing in Vanilla and Warlords, what you've described is pretty much all you can do. I agree, I pretty much just used them as scouts. :p

In Beyond the Sword though they are wonderfully expanded and more than you could ask for, so I recommend getting the expansion pack. Destroying production, blowing up buildings, creating unhappiness, poisoning water, throwing cities into revolt, influencing civics and religion, and of course stealing technologies. It has more than useful spies of course, so well worth the purchase.

Sabotage their happy resources, especially those they have only one of. Their people stop working and starve to death. Even more effective if they don't have emancipation.

Mac user T_T

Use Boot Camp, if you have Leopard, you already have it. You just need to buy Vista. The cheapest one is the Home Basic Package (that is NOT the upgrade kind). I think it costs $200. If you don't have Boot Camp, you'll need to get parallels since they do not sell Boot Camp.

Well actually I am more into running "Fusion" which is fine. Except then I need to get vista, and get Civ4, Warlords and BTS for windows. This project is looking to cost me like 400$... And I ALREAD spent 100$ on friggin Civ4 and Warlords for mac
:mad:

Actually, Civ 4 Gold (which includes vanilla and warlords) is $40 and beyond the sword is $20. So in total you'll be paying around $260 (the two hundred is what vista costs), more than one and a half times less than what you said. But I do agree, Beyond the Sword should defiantly come out for mac, us (mac users) shouldn't have to change operating systems and spend a lot more money.

Oh, I was thinking all three expansions were like 40-60. But still, buying vista...

Vomit.

No offense.